Home audio & video forum: audio cable question

Your question "what am I after" is fair enough. I can't give a complete answer but am taking down some sheetrock for another reason and it seems a good time to run cable. I'm putting cat6 cable for a computer network. I have 3 computers. I plan to use my computers hd to store music and parcel it out to one of 2 older analogue receivers. I'm not sure where everything will be located. Just because a receiver is in a particular spot today does not mean it will be there tomorrow.
I want to run audio cable from my computers to the receivers which may be located in a different room. Of course I want the quality to be as high as practical, but understand there will be compromises. Hopefully this helps clarify my intentions.

That's the kicker. I would use 10meters as a reasonable baseline limit to how far you can expect a good, clean signal to travel via a standard digital optical cable. It's normally cheaper to use shielded RG-6 75 ohm cables for longer distances if price is an option. Bandwidth is definitely there for other purposes too.

Also, what sort of inputs do your older receivers have? Are you mainly pumping out sound from MP3 (lossy files) on your PCs, or higher fidelity FLAC/WAV (lossless) files?

have 50+ gb of WAV files ripped from CD's. My computer network consists of 2 desktop computers and a laptop. (windows xp & windows 7) My network is both wired and wireless. I have a pre HDMI Integra Receiver that is half good, a cheap Kenwood stereo receiver, a cd & dvd player and a bunch of different speakers. (an age range that spans 25 years)
I'd been thinking of running an audio cable from the Integra to the Kenwood to power the zone 2 speakers. Both receivers would be controlled through Windows Media Player via my computer network. (wired & wireless)
The maximum distance appears to be about 60 feet but I could arrange components so the distance between receivers would be around 35 feet and the remaining could be speaker wire. Due to the age of the receivers, I seem to be limited to rca audio cables but wasn't sure what to buy. The retailers seem to be only interested in selling 3 or 6 foot cables. Just try going to best buy and asking about diy cableing. They look at you like you're insane.

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You could have posted all that good useful stuff in the first entry <j/k> 8-)

Don't bother with big box stores for DIY cabling. That's why you would visit Radio Shack/Lowe's/Home Depot/etc. Better discounts are available online if you look around, of course depending on what you are after (bulk vs smaller amounts; pre-terminated vs non-terminated cables). {If you think that's bad, you should try asking a big box store employee a really *easy* question. They look at you like you have two heads and a tail . }

I'd say you are right on track if you are serving up big WAV files with WMP. (I still prefer VLC Media Player though. FWIW, I use FLAC since it takes up half the HDD space.) Wired is going to be your best bet to avoid any bottlenecks with streaming lossless files through a big house. Here's a useful discussion thread that covers options using a main receiver's 'pre-out' (or tape/aux) to accommodate what you have described with your old Kenwood & speakers in 'zone 2'. The latter gives you the option of a separate output control by both receivers if you want it.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-382840.html

Let me know if I missed anything .